


In With the Tide (Out With the Tide)

by lucskywalks



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, I'm horrible at tagging, I'm trying to think of warning-type tags, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Light Angst, Lighthouses, Magnus Burnsides deserves happiness, Magnus's story/pov, Mermaid AU--kinda, i really love julia, light taako pining, suicide ideation mention, very brief blood mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 11:07:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10638594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucskywalks/pseuds/lucskywalks
Summary: Magnus’s beginning is on the shore, ocean water crashing against the rocks at high tide as he surveys the lighthouse where his father is keeper."Nothing good ever comes from the sea." His father's words ring in his head.Magnus keeps everything that washes up on shore. Suddenly, one of those things is Julia.





	

**Author's Note:**

> magnus has this one tiny line in crystal kingdom about being a collector so i just wanted to roll with it. this is really just a collection of thoughts I've had about lighthouses and sea glass but I'm really in love with julia/magnus so just....take this from me 
> 
> I'm sorry if this is choppy/poorly edited, i didn't have anyone beta it so ..yeah

Magnus’s beginning is on the shore, ocean water crashing against the rocks at high tide as he surveys the lighthouse where his father is keeper.

 

The sky is grim, clouds a heavy gray and seas a navy blue, foaming white at its tips as the ocean water rolls in. There will be a storm, Magnus knows, but he’s no stranger to the sea, and there’s nothing to fear from a storm on the shore.

 

At least, that’s what he used to think, before he learned better than to think safety was measured in how well his toes could grip at the sand.                                      

 

There are two beginnings.

 

_beginning_

 

Magnus is fifteen.

 

Magnus’s father mans the lighthouse. His gnarled hands wind the clocks and trim the candle wicks, and clean the beacon lens and fill the lamps, the fuel catching under his fingernails and making him smell like oil day-in and day-out.

 

In the morning, Magnus’s father goes up to the top of the lighthouse with a stern face and sweeps the dead birds from the deck, mouth set grim as he brushes them off and down to the water. Then he descends the ladders, and then the circular-winding stairs, and settles at the table, looking across at Magnus, or maybe looking through him. He’s been awake all night, and Magnus can see the weariness in the line of his shoulders, a downward slant that seems more mental than physical. The ocean wears away at even the strongest of cliffs.

The crash of the waves is loud in Magnus’s ears.

 

At night, though, it’s even louder, as Magnus lies in his bed and looks up at the ceiling of his small room, counting the starfish that decorate his ceiling. His father turns the beacon, blinking it three times steady, warning an approaching ship of rocks just ahead. It illuminates Magnus’s room through his curtainless window, glinting off the glimmering sea glass Magnus has always kept.

 

Taako once asked him, when they were still small children, curled up together on Magnus’s bed whispering secrets beneath the covers, how he managed to sleep with all the noise. Magnus had turned to him, rolling onto his side to smile at his best friend, and told him he couldn’t sleep without it.

 

Sometimes, Magnus ponders life outside the lighthouse, but not for long. The lighthouse keeper’s job is by nature an isolated one, but Magnus and his father live in a quiet solitude that’s more comfortable than lonely.

 

Sometimes, Magnus looks across the table at his father in the mornings and imagines himself in his father’s seat, and it feels as inevitable as the tide.

 

This will be Magnus some years from now. Magnus’s hands will bear the calluses, wind the clocks and trim the wicks. Magnus’s eyes will look out into the distance, watching the current with a wary gaze.

 

“Don’t trust the ocean,” his father says, one day, gruff and steady as he studies Magnus’s collection of trophies that line the shelves of his room, eyes fixing on clam shells and smoothed down, salt-whitened tree branches that have come from other shores to theirs. “You can love it, but you can’t trust it. Nothing good has ever come from the sea.”

 

“My mother came from the sea,” Magnus says. He thinks about black hair that curled softly down a pale back, and fingertips as cool as the sand in deep water pushing his hair from his eyes. He swallows, and sucks his lower lip into his mouth, and his father looks at him, eyebrows drawn and lips curled down.

 

“Exactly,” his father says, and Magnus closes his fist around his lucky sand dollar and doesn’t reply.

 

_collections_

 

Magnus has always felt that a part of him belongs to the sea. He remembers walking along the wet sand with Taako’s wrist clutched in his hand. He remembers being seven.

 

“You should come to my house, sometimes,” Taako says, his accent strange and thick, and Magnus had looked at him with confused eyes.

 

“But then we’d be so far from the ocean,” Magnus says, and Taako laughs.

 

“Not really,” Taako says. “Less than a mile.” But he shrugs and stays in step as Magnus’s gaze sweeps the beach looking for things to keep.

 

Magnus is a collector. He’s never been the sort who can let go of anything. He’s selfish, and he hoards, and he clings, and he never feels bad about it, because no one seems to mind except his father, who sometimes looks at Magnus sadly like Magnus is going to drown in all the things he’s found.

 

His largest collection is of things he picks up on the beach. Trinkets others would leave behind make their way into Magnus’s pockets and eventually onto the shelves that line the perimeter of his room, or become affixed to the walls so that even when Magnus is inside the lighthouse, he’s brought the ocean with him.

 

But Magnus collects memories, too. Of his mother and of the sunrise and of his father’s hand on the back of his neck and of Taako’s laughter in the early morning, and maybe that, actually, is Magnus’s largest collection.

 

_memory_

 

…and cold sea water rushes into his nose, his ears, and brine and seaweed slide down his throat and his lungs burn and ache and Magnus tries to fight his way to the surface but it’s too far to reach before everything goes dark.

 

_beginning ii_

 

Magnus is nineteen.

 

He walks along the shore alone this time, picking up fragments of shells and tucking them into the left pocket of his trousers. The right pocket is reserved for other trinkets. The tide is receding, leaving behind treasures for Magnus to gather. Shiny bits of sea glass peek out of the wet sand. Magnus only takes the large pieces, these days, because his hands are bigger, but it’s still enough to weigh down his pockets, the leather of his belt digging into his hips as he walks.

 

The tide gives a final great shove in, and Magnus gets wet up to his mid-calf, sea foam licking up towards his knees as he shivers from the cold. The ocean, here, is always cold, but now it is autumn, so the air is cold too.

 

The water is tugged back, the waves collapsing over each other as a new swell comes in, much lower than the first, and that’s when Magnus sees her. The girl lies prostrate on the sand, face hidden in the fold of her arm and knees tucked up to her chest like a child fending off nightmares. But her limbs are long and plump, assuring Magnus that she’s no child at all.

 

Sand that had felt cool beneath his feet suddenly feels warm. Magnus swallows, and his throat is dry. He’s parched after a full day of walking, and his tongue feels thick.

 

Magnus approaches, carefully, squatting down beside the woman and tentatively reaching out to push the hair out of her face. The woman’s cheeks, revealed to the sun and to Magnus’s eyes, are wet with the salt of tears, not the sea. Magnus lets his his eyes drift across her face, unsure of what to do.

 

The flutter of eyelashes, and then dark eyes are staring up at him, guarded and wary. “Why aren’t you afraid?” The woman's voice is raspy, and her full, plump lips are dry and cracked, chalky around the edges. There’s a tinge of confusion in her eyes; not like she’s lost, but like she doesn’t understand.

 

Magnus wonders how long she’s belonged to the ocean, or if she always has, ghosting beneath the waves. “My mother was from the sea,” Magnus says and the woman digs her fingers into the sand. Magnus can see now, the jagged edges of her nails and the tiny cuts along her torso and arms and thighs, maybe made by the very same sea glass Magnus has clacking in his pockets. Tiny bits of seaweed cling to her ankles and calves.

 

“Nothing good comes from the sea,” the woman says, and Magnus licks his lips. Her voice is stronger now, and deeper than Magnus had expected, a vibrant timbre that sends a trill down Magnus’s spine.

 

“So I’ve been told,” Magnus says, and he reaches into his left pocket and pulls out pieces of shells. “But look. These came from the sea, and they’re not bad.”

 

“Those are abandoned homes,” she replies, sitting up. “They used to protect their inhabitants. Now they’re just useless. Something broken the sea has thrown away.”

 

“No they're not,” Magnus says, suddenly defensive, though he doesn’t know why. “They're not useless.” He smiles, and stands. The woman’s eyes follow the motion, frowning, and Magnus looks down at her, wanting to smooth his thumbs along the lines in her brow. “I keep them, and make something new with them. Make them part of my home.”

 

“What?”

 

Magnus holds out a hand, and the woman just looks at it. Her hair is sticking to her cheeks again, but a little of the chill seems to be fading from her. “Let me show you,” he says, and he wriggles his fingers in invitation. He can tell he’s being sized up, but he’s never had much to hide. His curly hair falls into his eyes, and he shakes it away, before bringing his right hand up to push it back. His left hand returns the shell pieces to his pocket.

 

“Show me what?”

 

“The homes I make from the shells,” Magnus says, with a smile, trying to look as un-threatening as possible. The woman blinks, slow and steady, eyelashes dark and sticking wetly together against her dark skin. “Made of the things the sea throws away.”

 

The woman reaches up, and takes Magnus’s hand. Her palm is covered with sand, but it still feels nice against Magnus’s. “Show me, then,” she says, and Magnus smiles. The sun is setting, and it’s time for the lighthouse’s main beacon to flicker to life.

 

“What’s your name?”

 

“Julia,” she says, and all of a sudden, she smiles, a flash of white teeth and an expression on her face that can only be shy. She says it like Magnus ought to have known that already, and Magnus feels the name sink under his skin and write itself in the flesh beneath.

 

_restlessness_

 

Magnus loves the lighthouse, but there’s a piece of him that wants to dive into the water and never look back.

 

It’s tiny, but it tugs at him. In the middle of the night, as he blinks at the beam of light through his window, he wonders what it would be like to be aboard one of those boats, traveling off into uncharted waters.

 

“You don’t have to stay, you know.” Taako says one morning as they sit together on a soft blanket, looking down on their small sleepy town. “You can go anywhere, do anything you want.” He opens the picnic basket and pulls out cloth-wrapped sandwiches that Magnus knows will taste as good as they smell. “Nothing ties you here.”

 

Magnus leans back, catching his weight with his hands, and smiles at Taako, scrunching his nose at him. “I know that,” Magnus says. “Really.”

 

Taako tosses a sandwich into Magnus’s lap, and Magnus sits up properly to unwrap it. He can hear the waves behind them, and he turns his head slightly to watch them. “Then again,” Taako says, chewing thoughtfully, “I can’t see you going anywhere at all.”

 

_underwater_

 

The lighthouse has a green door. Magnus repainted it last year, when he became the keeper. Before that, it had been red, but Magnus doesn’t like red. The green is nice; dark against the white of the lighthouse. It was his mother’s favorite color, he thinks.

 

“I live here,” Magnus says to Julia.

 

Julia slips inside in front of him with a grace that Magnus can’t help but admire, watching the shift of the muscles in her back as she moves. It’s an ease that Magnus doesn’t have; he’d spent his school years tripping over doorways as Taako had fisted his hand in the back of his shirt to keep him from falling.

 

Julia moves like someone born to be in constant motion, the smooth extension of her legs as she walks more art than necessity. Magnus wraps his fingers around Julia’s wrist, like he used to with Taako, and pulls her toward his room.

 

“What’s in there?” Julia asks, pointing to a closed door that Magnus hasn’t opened in three-hundred and eighty-six days, and Magnus wets his lips.

 

“I don’t know,” he says, but he does. There’s a bed and a desk and photographs of people that Magnus has never met and dust and a lamp that’s been hanging from the same nail on the back of the door for as long as Magnus can remember.

 

“Okay,” Julia says, and Magnus guides her into his cove. “Oh,” Julia says, and she looks around with wide eyes.

 

“I keep it all safe,” Magnus says proudly, stepping in after her. “What drifts onto the shore. I keep it all.” He empties his pockets onto his desk as he talks, carefully separating the shells by color and the sea glass by size, and then Julia is next to him. Magnus hadn’t heard her move.

 

“It feels like underwater,” Julia says, and she bites down on her lower lip and looks at Magnus anxiously. “I just thought you would be afraid.”

 

“Should I be?” Magnus asks lightly, shaking a curl from his eyes again. Julia sways, and shivers, and there are goosebumps rising across her body.

 

Magnus grabs the nearest shirt from his chest of drawers and tosses it to her, and Julia reaches out instinctively to catch it. Magnus can see the moment it occurs to her that she is naked and she shouldn’t be, and, despite himself, Magnus already loves the way her cheeks turn just a shade darker and the way she tucks her chin towards her chest as she peers out through those impossibly thick lashes.

 

“For me?” The seaweed on her right calf peels loose, and she looks like something out of a storybook, only Magnus knows this isn’t as rare as all of that. “But this is yours.”

 

“Do you have somewhere else to go?” Magnus asks, and Julia’s flush grows darker, and she quickly looks away, eyes fixing on the window-sill next to Magnus’s bed, where Magnus’s lucky sand dollar rests. Magnus is confused by the hunching of Julia’s shoulders, lithe cat-like grace replaced by anxiety. That, Magnus thinks, he can compete with.

“No,” Julia mumbles. “I hadn’t planned—” she presses her lips together to stop the sound. The skin on them is chapped, cracks along the lower lip looking almost painful. Magnus supposes the saltwater will do that.

 

“Then I’ll keep you safe too,” Magnus says eagerly, and it earns him another one of those slow, incredulous smiles.

 

Julia starts to speak, but then she just runs a hand through her hair and pulls the shirt over her head, and Magnus does his best not to look too carefully at the rest of her as he walks across the room to hand her a pair of trousers too. “Are you… sure?”

 

The sun has almost disappeared now, and Magnus’s room is cast in fading purple light as night falls. “Oh,” he begins, tearing his eyes away from hers. “I, uh—I have to go turn on the light,” Magnus says, “in case there’s a ship.”

 

“Right,” Julia says, hushed, and her eyes are as fathomless to Magnus as what lies at the bottom of the ocean’s depths.

 

_memory ii_

 

…air leaves his lungs and light leaves his eyes and there’s nothing to hold onto, only the faint image of the moon and Magnus doesn’t quite want to remember—

 

_low tide_

 

Julia bubbles and froths and tugs Magnus into a whole new way of life. She makes Magnus laugh with the way food seems to miss her mouth in the mornings, and she makes him shiver with the way she leans too close while Magnus stands watch.

 

She tells him jokes that don’t make any sense, and wriggles and blushes when Magnus mercilessly tells her so. Magnus’s hand always seems to fall to rest on Julia’s hip, too, when they stand side by side, and she doesn’t seem to mind, which makes Magnus feel all the more like Julia is a little bit his, even if Magnus doesn’t know why she’s here.

 

Why she’s emerged from the depths to stay in Magnus’s lighthouse and curl up alongside Magnus in his bed as they count the starfish on the ceiling instead of the stars in the sky.

 

“She’s from the sea,” Avi says, when Magnus takes Julia into town to buy her clothes and maybe a few things from the grocers. They’ve stopped into the store where Avi works, and as Julia squats down to examine an old watch in the jewelry case, Avi leans across the counter, polishing cloth dangling between his fingers. “I can smell it on her.”

 

“Don’t… don’t say it so loud,” Magnus says, even though they're alone in the shop. Avi laughs, picks up a vase, and rolls his eyes, like Magnus is being silly. Maybe he is, because it doesn’t matter if people know where Julia’s from.

 

Magnus’s mother had been the same.

 

“She makes you smile,” Avi says, and he finishes polishing the antique vase, setting it carefully on the table. “I missed that. And you’ve always loved the sea.”

 

_things Magnus hasn’t decided on_

 

Magnus hasn’t figured out if he loves the sea or hates it. All the same, it’s his, and he can’t let it go, because it’s as much a part of his life as breathing.

 

_slow drag_

 

Taako leans his head on Magnus’s shoulder as they both watch Julia wade into the water up to mid-thigh, unconcerned with the late autumn wind. It stings Magnus’s cheeks, but he smiles anyway as Julia turns around to wave at him wildly. Magnus’s heart quickens, for a moment, and he wonders if Julia will dive beneath the waves and disappear. She doesn’t, though; just slowly wades back to shore, letting her fingertips skim at the surface of the waves as she walks.

 

“You’re different,” Taako says.

 

“Me?” Magnus asks. “How so?”

 

Taako sighs and straightens, so he can look at Magnus directly. “Better. After last year.”

 

Magnus thinks about closed doors that stay closed, and private ceremonies, and swallows roughly.

 

“Julia is so…”

 

“Be careful,” Taako says, but his eyes say so much more than that. Magnus had learned how to read them back when Taako had yet to learn how to speak Common. “Magnus…”

 

Julia’s reached the shore now. Her skirt is soaked, and her hair is wild and windblown, but she doesn’t seem to feel the cold, her shirt unbuttoned at the top to reveal deep bronze of her collarbones. Julia’s smile, though, is where Magnus’s eyes linger, because it's infinitely more luminous than the sun above them.

 

“She’s so…” Magnus says, and he stops himself, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets at a particularly fierce gust of wind. His stomach is queasy, a little, and his pulse is racing.

 

“Just remember the message in a bottle,” Taako says, but there’s something locked away in his voice. “Sometimes the ocean drags things back in.”

 

Magnus rubs the thin, faded scar at his eyebrow and hopes he can keep Julia.

 

_message in a bottle_

 

Magnus is nine.

 

“Look!” Magnus shouts, and Taako grabs Merle’s hand and pulls him along. Merle huffs, looking a little fussy at being pulled away from his book, but soon he’s laughing too as they make for the shore. Merle’s big white puppy barks and runs ahead of them.

 

“I think it’s a bottle!”

 

Magnus trips over an unseen piece of petrified wood and falls, and when he lifts his head, there’s a thin cut at his eye, and the bottle is gone again, swallowed back into the waves.

 

“Are ya all right, kid?” Merle asks, panting a little, as Taako looks worriedly at the blood seeping onto Magnus’s forehead. He can feel it stinging, but he’s more upset about the lost treasure than the cut.

 

“I always wanted to find one,” Magnus complains. “It was right there.”

 

He can imagine his father’s laugh. “ _She tricked you_ ,” his father would say, looking out at the ocean as he fixed himself tea. “ _And you fell for it_.”

 

“You can’t keep everything the sea washes up, Magnus,” Merle says, resting his hands on his hips.

 

“Why not?” Magnus says, and he knows he sounds angry and childish, but he is a child. Magnus is also a little greedy, wanting to keep everything, eyes collecting ahead of his fingers.

 

“Because the sea can’t possibly give up everything it’s got,” Merle says, fixing Magnus’s hair with his fingers, old even then, calloused but strong. “Sometimes it’s just lettin’ ya take a little look before it snatches it back.”

 

Magnus doesn’t like that. He still doesn't. But Magnus has always been selfish.

 

_keeping watch_

 

Julia watches him sometimes, eyes heavy on Magnus’s every move, and Magnus wants to keep Julia so bad it eats him up inside.

 

_collections ii_

 

Julia wants to know the story behind almost every one of Magnus’s shells and pieces of glass. Luckily, despite their number, Magnus is so particular about them that he remembers.

 

That piece of shell was from when Magnus was eleven, and Taako had buried him in the sand as punishment for some misdeed or another, and that piece of glass was from when Magnus had invited Merle and Taako to lighthouse for the first time and he and Taako had ended up wrestling on the beach until it had dug into Taako’s back and he’d screamed.

 

“And this?” Julia asks, and she holds up the sand dollar, Magnus’s lucky one, between them, and there’s something unreadable in her eyes that makes Magnus feel like he’s missing a piece of the puzzle.

 

“That’s…” Magnus licks his lips, and Julia’s amber eyes flicker down before her tongue is peeking out to wet her own. “I don’t remember,” Magnus says, and Julia’s eyebrows furrow. Magnus wants to run his fingertips up the bridge of Julia’s nose, or higher, until the furrow smoothes, but that’s closer than Magnus can bear during the light of day. At night, Julia can’t easily see the way Magnus stares at her, mesmerized by the way her body fits so nicely against his own as they lean against the maps and talk about anything and everything.

 

“It’s your favorite, though, right?” Julia asks, and the sand dollar is the perfect size to sit on her palm. Julia curls her fingers around it, and Magnus wants to snatch it away because it’s his treasure.

 

“I don’t _remember_ when it’s from,” Magnus snaps, and Julia flinches, making Magnus feel instantly guilty. “I’m s-sorry,” he stammers. “I didn’t mean to yell.”

 

“I was just curious,” Julia says, but it is not idle curiosity in the set of her mouth or in the melancholy that clouds her eyes like the murky seawater in the wake of a cargo ship.

 

_sand dollar_

 

Magnus was six.

 

The sand dollar had been clutched in Magnus’s tiny fist when he’d opened his eyes, alive. His cheek had pressed into the sand, and Magnus could feel the grains along his skin. His throat had been raw, and his belly full of ocean. He’d quickly hunched over and coughed it up, shaking, the salt burning his nose and throat even more as the water choked its way from him reluctantly.

 

He remembers a shadow, and a soft kiss to his forehead. A voice that Magnus, still, after all these years, can’t place.

 

_mermaids_

 

Magnus’s mother used to laughingly talk of mermaids, telling fairytales that bore no resemblance to the truth. She combed her fingers through his hair as she told him about the god Procan, greedy and free, taking the winds for himself, uncaring of humans or their fates.

 

“But that’s all pretend,” she had said. Magnus wishes he could remember how she looked when she’d said it. “Mermaids are a figment of land-dweller’s imaginations. That’s not what it means, to be from the sea.”

 

_julia_

 

Julia clings in her sleep. Magnus clings when he’s awake, so turnabout is fair play, but the way Julia slips and curves into Magnus’s personal space, pulling his chest into the sweet warmth of her back as she holds his hand beneath hers, against her smoothly curved stomach, makes Magnus’s blood rush, a tide pulling him in. 

 

Julia’s skin beneath his fingertips is like dipping his toes into the ocean, touching everything it has to offer and yet aware that it is impossible to ever know it all. Sometimes, Magnus wakes, and Julia is looking down on him like he’s a mystery, indecipherable, and Magnus wants to reach up and drag his hand down the line of Julia’s neck and shoulder. He doesn’t.

 

“Why are you here?” Magnus asks her, one day, and Julia laughs nervously, burying her face in Magnus’s quilt.

 

“To see you, of course,” she says, and she sounds cocky and flippant, but there’s something strange in her voice.

 

Magnus wishes it were true, but it’s enough that Julia is here, bringing the ocean even closer.

 

“Close your mouth,” Julia says. “You look like a landed fish.” Her russet blush is fading, and Magnus misses it, but her smile is just as lovely.

 

“That’s how I feel, sometimes.”

 

Julia goes quiet. “Your mother was from the sea,” she says, after a while, and Magnus nods. “She’s a part of you.” Julia’s arm brushes against Magnus’s, and the slide of skin against skin makes Magnus forget about the late autumn weather.

 

_memories iii_

…dragged down and down and down, until everything goes dark.

 

_lighthouses_

 

The lighthouse is the only life Magnus has ever known. Behind closed eyelids, Magnus can see the beacon spinning round and round, flickering in signal out to the open sea.

 

His lighthouse is beautiful.

 

He can recall, vividly, the way his mother’s hand had felt wrapped around his own as they stood on the deck as the wind blew their hair, the week before she was gone. He remembers the yellow and light blue seersucker of her dress and that her palm had felt like silk and that her dark hair had fallen to the middle of her back. “The sea’s my home,” she’d said, and her voice had trickled like honey down his spine and he remembers that too.

 

He can’t remember her face, though, and he doesn’t have any pictures, but he thinks she might have looked a bit like him, the lips and narrow eyes and high cheekbones. He imagines her when he sees his reflection in the washbasin in the morning, and wonders if her nose had been wide at the bridge like his own.

 

Magnus can conjure up the image of his father twisting the gears, face fierce with concentration. “Watch, Magnus,” he’d said. “This is how it’s done.” His hand had been so much larger than Magnus’s, and Magnus had wanted, so much, to do it right.

 

The lighthouse is a thousand memories Magnus will never let himself forget, and twenty-three years that have passed and who knows how many more will.

 

Magnus knows the lighthouse is not the same for others. Taako, whose sister came back and forth by cargo vessel every other month, had told him once that the lighthouse was a symbol of safety for the elves aboard. Kravitz had mumbled something about tomorrows that are different from yesterdays, probably because Kravitz and his mother had come to this town with nothing on one of those ships that the lighthouse had guided into harbor. And Merle had told him that light represented hope, but Merle is the sort to smile up at the sun even if it blinds him.

 

Avi had told Magnus, with those sparkling eyes that always promised the unexpected, that the lighthouse would always mean something different to Magnus than it meant to everyone else, because Magnus was part of the lighthouse, same as his father had been.

 

“You should go,” Taako had said, leaning against the upper deck's railing a little over a year ago. “You can’t stay here, Magnus. Not after…”

 

“Where else would I go?” Magnus had replied brokenly, wiping tears from his cheeks. He looked over at Taako, whose long hair spilled perfectly across his shoulders, even in the sea breeze, and Taako sighed. Taako’s dark black dress contrasted against the white of the lighthouse. “Everything is here,” Magnus whispered.

 

“ _Nothing_ is here, Maggie.” Taako had said, voice was hard and stern. “Nothing except the sea.”

 

Magnus had stepped away from the railing, and pressed a shaking hand to the wall.

 

The walls of the lighthouse make all those memories sing in Magnus’s veins,

 

but that doesn’t mean he can’t make new ones.

 

He laughs as Julia chases him up the winding circular staircase, both of them tripping between giggles, out of breath. Julia’s laugh ripples like the sea at sunrise, and Magnus sometimes feels like he’ll get lost in the undertow of that sound, because it pulls him closer without him even noticing.

 

Julia catches him at the top of the stairs as Magnus half-falls with a _thud_  onto the second story landing, hands reaching out to grab the steel ladder that leads up as Julia’s arms wrap around his waist. Magnus ignores his rapidly beating heart and wriggles free, a child dodging the lapping water. He climbs the ladder up into the observatory, Julia directly behind him.

 

“There’s nowhere to run, now,” Julia says, and she’s smirking, smug, eyes gleaming with just enough mischief to charm, and Magnus can’t seem to catch his breath.

 

Julia’s smile fades, and something else seems to rise in her eyes, and Magnus takes a step backward, and then another, until his back is flush against the maps and his fingers rest against the concrete wall.

 

“Who said I wanted to run?” Magnus replies, in spite of himself, and Julia swallows.

 

Magnus’s eyes flit down, to watch the movement of her throat, but when he tries to meet her gaze again, his eyes stick at her lips. Julia’s tongue peeks out, a nervous habit that reminds him of his own, and then she’s stepping nearer, closing the distance between them.

 

“Nothing good has ever come from the sea,” she says, like a warning, and Magnus takes a deep breath. He tentatively brings his hands up to curl into Julia’s shirt-- it’s Magnus’s shirt, actually, big on her, but now it smells like her-- and he tugs, knuckles brushing across the curves of Julia’s chest as her hands come to rest ever-so-light on his waist.

 

“ _You_ came from the sea,” Magnus says, meeting her eyes, dark as the ocean’s depths, and Julia kisses him.

 

Magnus’s not sure what he’d expected her to taste like, but he almost smiles at the tang of salt he finds between her lips. It’s like plunging into the water over his head, and only Julia anchors him, pushing him back so he’s held up between chest and wall.

 

Julia is as eager as he is, pulling at Magnus’s lips and tongue and beckoning him in, and Magnus is helpless under her hungry mouth. Someone moans, and Magnus thinks it’s him, and he tilts his head, and wants more. Julia sighs, tongue twisting with Magnus’s, lips slick with spit, and Magnus has never kissed anyone before, but this feels as familiar as briny ocean air in the spring. Julia’s mouth fits against his perfectly, and this is water too deep to swim in but he knows she will keep him afloat.

 

When they part, Magnus is at a loss for air. Julia’s hands have found their way underneath Magnus’s shirt, to the skin of his belly, and her fingers are hot. “Is this…”

 

Julia’s voice is quiet, and Magnus shudders at it, fingers digging harder into the flannel. “Is this okay?”

 

Magnus laughs, breathlessly, and leans forward to kiss Julia’s nose. “I’m going to keep you.”

 

“You can’t keep people,” she says, and Magnus looks up at her, pressing his lips together. They feel swollen, and they still tingle from the press of Julia’s.

 

Julia’s eyes are wide, but a smile teases at her lips, and there’s a red flush to her supple, dark cheeks, and she’s beautiful. Beautiful like Magnus’s lighthouse, and beautiful like the ocean.

 

“I keep everything that washes up on that shore,” Magnus says, loosening one hand to bring it up to her face. He rests his palm against her cheek, and slides his thumb across her thick lips, feeling them tremble. Maybe it’s Magnus who trembles. Probably, it’s the both of them. “You’re no exception.”

 

The sun sets on Magnus’s fingers slipping into Julia’s hair and Julia’s hands exploring the curve of Magnus’s spine, but when night falls, they part, watching the dark waves as they rush rough up on the rocks to the ever-present pull of the moon.

 

Julia’s hand is warm in his own, though, and when he turns to study her profile, he wonders if she misses home.

 

_undercurrents_

 

Magnus hasn’t really understood that he’s prone to obsession until now. He traces the bow of Julia’s upper lip and the slope of her nose and the curve of her neck, and he can think of no other word for the way he feels but obsessed.

 

It’s similar to how Magnus used to feel about the pebbles and shell shards and glass, but it pulls at him, stronger, more.

 

It’s _more_ , and Magnus can barely tear his eyes away from the crinkles at the corners of Julia’s eyes when he says something silly and makes her laugh. He can’t look away, because Julia is the most wonderful thing that Magnus has ever collected; it’s a little like having her means Magnus carries the sea around with him constantly, in a form Magnus can talk to and touch and taste, and Magnus has never wanted to keep something so much.

 

_too deep_

 

Now it’s Magnus who sweeps away the dead birds in the morning, after he dims the beacon.

 

“Why are there so many?” Julia asks, and Magnus swallows.

 

“They’re attracted to the light,” Magnus says. “They see it and they fly too close. They crash into it and they…”

 

He pauses, and Julia licks her lips.

 

“Me too,” she says, and Magnus looks up at her through his hair, seeing peeks of her face through the curls. “I came because I was attracted to the light. I swam too close and the sea spit me out.”

 

“But you weren’t near the tower, when I found you,” Magnus says, and he thinks about Julia, curled up along the beach, sandy and nude under the blue sky. Julia straightens, pushing off the wall and moving behind Magnus, wrapping her arms around Magnus’s waist. Her arms are strong, and warm, and yet still, Julia feels a little like the sea foam that licks at Magnus’s toes in the spring.

 

“Well. It’s not exactly the light that lured me,” she says, lips brushing the skin of Magnus’s ear, and he shivers. Her eyes focus outward, across the water, to where the rocks jut out from the waves, dangerous but beautiful.

 

She kisses just behind Magnus’s jaw, and then down Magnus’s neck, and Magnus’s heart rises and falls like the tide.

 

_the tide washes things away_

 

Magnus looks over the edge of the deck after he sweeps the birds, and sometimes, for a fraction of a second, he sees the body of a man instead, red water spreading across the rocks.

 

_anchors_

 

“I don’t—” Julia starts to say, but Magnus is kissing her, licking into her mouth, salt-water taffy and endless spring, hands undoing the fastenings on Julia’s trousers as she clings to him. “Magnus, I—”

 

“Me either,” Magnus says. “But I—”

 

“Okay,” Julia says, and then she’s sliding her hands up Magnus’s shirt, fingers grazing pebbled nipples and sternum and skin that is hot, and Magnus kisses her deeper, memorizing the texture of teeth and cheeks and tongue.

 

Magnus strokes at her softly, a little clumsy at first, easing a finger into her, and Julia hisses into his mouth, hips jerking up into Magnus’s grip like she’s never been touched. Maybe she hasn’t, he thinks, and that makes Magnus even harder as he grinds against Julia’s hip, gasping against her lips.

 

Later, when she finally sinks down onto him, looking down at him like Magnus is the gravity that moves the waters, maybe the moon, Magnus does not feel restless. Magnus feels anchored by Julia’s nails digging into the flesh of his thighs and Julia’s half-open eyes and the feeling of Julia pressing onto him and above him and all around him. He can feel the bruises on his neck and chest, made by Julia’s lips, and the ones at his waist, made by overeager hands, and they only add to the feeling of being carried out to sea, driftwood caught in the currents of Julia, Julia, Julia.

 

  _reflections_

 

Magnus has watched the ocean his whole life, but it is still unpredictable.

 

_winter_

 

The first heavy snowfall begins in the middle of the night. Magnus can see the thick clumps of flakes as they fall in front of the beacon light, tiny white flecks against the dimly lit evening sky, and he shivers.

 

“So this is snow,” Julia says, and Magnus turns to look at her.

 

“You’ve never seen snow?” He pulls a face at Julia, and Julia sticks her tongue out at him. Julia’s coat is open, but she never seems to feel the cold.

 

“Not from above,” Julia says, and as she looks at the accumulation on the beach, amazement sneaks into her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Magnus wonders if all these things are enough to keep Julia with him, on the shore.

 

Magnus doesn’t know if he’s enough, alone. After all, he hadn’t kept his mother, and he’s been trying to fill the space she left behind with sea glass and shells ever since.

 

_shipwrecks_

 

A part of Magnus has always belonged to the sea.

 

In weaker moments, he thinks that Julia is the reason; that he was destined to finally find his peace in Julia’s awkward flushes and parted lips. That the restlessness inside of him had called out to Julia and Julia had answered, appearing on the shore to take possession of Magnus’s heart.

 

That’s all right, because Magnus is pretty sure he has possession of Julia’s heart, too, and Magnus’s always been a collector. He’d always liked to keep things. He doesn’t mind being kept in exchange.

 

In the deepest of winter, the chill seeps in through the cracks in the old lighthouse walls, and the gaps between the concrete and the glass of the window. But Julia’s tongue burns as it licks along Magnus’s collarbone, hot like sand in the summer, teeth scratching the skin just hard enough to sting, and Magnus doesn’t feel the cold. All he feels are the pads of Julia’s fingertips dragging lines along his ribs, dipping into the grooves where Magnus’s skin is stretched tight, and Julia’s lips are soft and hot and wet as she presses openmouthed kisses to Magnus’s belly, before venturing lower. Her tongue curls around Magnus, licking up the underside of him as Magnus burrows his hands into her soft dark hair, and the light of the rising sun is shining off of the sea glass and Julia’s eager amber eyes.

 

Julia’s still sloppy; neither of them have it quite perfect yet, but they know each other’s bodies, and Julia knows when to take Magnus deeper and when to pull back, too, Magnus pulled along in the current of arousal as Julia teases him deeper into the waters. Julia’s slick fingers work inside of him, and it’s a triptych of sensation; the stretch of muscle, the heat of desire that laces down his legs from where it’s coiled in his belly, and the taste of sea-salt that lingers from when they’d kissed.

 

Julia watches Magnus carefully as she curls her fingers, eyebrows drawn together as a bead of sweat traces its way down the column of her neck, and settles in the hollow of her clavicles. Magnus feels every centimeter, tongue peeking out to wet his lips as he groans. Like the calm before a storm, Julia slowly pulls her fingers away, and Magnus' breath flutters, and then Julia is crashing them back into him, and Magnus just wraps his fingers around her shoulder and tries to stay afloat.

 

Later, Julia lies on her stomach, one arm thrown across Magnus’s hips to keep him close, and her breath whispers across his cheek, the gentle caress of a midmorning flush of seawater, leaving treasures for Magnus to find.

 

Day breaks across Julia’s sweaty back, scattered sunlight making her sparkle like the early morning waves, and Magnus is shipwrecked by feelings that that threaten to drown him.

 

Part of Magnus has always belonged to the sea, and he's starting to think that maybe drowning like this is as inevitable as the tide swelling and retreating against the sand.

 

“A part of me,” Julia says, “has always belonged to the shore.” She brings her hand up and cups Magnus’s face, fingers behind his ear, thumb dragging along Magnus’s scar. “I wonder if this is why.”

 

Magnus lifts Julia’s hand to his mouth, and leaves a kiss on her palm. “I belong to _you_ ,” Magnus says simply, and he is one of Julia’s treasures, and her smile sparkles in the sunrise.

 

  _memories iv_

 

Magnus watched and waited for his mother to come back for a long time. Day after day, sitting on the beach and looking out at the ocean, he wondered if she would suddenly emerge, seaweed tangles in her hair and lips and suddenly, Magnus would remember her face and not just her laugh.

 

He’d waited and waited until one day, his father had wrapped unforgiving fingers around his upper arm, dragging him away.

 

“She won’t come back,” his father had said. “Sometimes the sea doesn’t wash things ashore for you to keep. Sometimes it’s just to taunt you before it’s swallowed up again in the waves.” He had sounded bitter, and Magnus had wanted to hug him, but he didn’t. “Nothing good _ever_ comes from the sea.”

 

“If she wasn’t good, why are you so sad you couldn’t keep her?” Magnus had wanted to ask, but he hadn’t.

 

But now, as he watches Julia ascend the stairs, graceful as a ballet dancer with every extension of her arms or tilt of her neck, Magnus’s heart clenches, and he thinks he finally understands.

 

It’s not _Julia_ that's bad, though. What's bad is how much Magnus will ache if she slips back into the waves and disappears from his life as easily as she had drifted in.

 

_nightmares_

 

Magnus dreams of waking up in the lighthouse alone, and when he actually wakes, he can’t calm his fiercely beating heart until he feels Julia’s breath against his cheek.

 

_lies_

 

“Why aren’t you afraid?” Julia asks, and Magnus curls his fingers around Julia’s wrist and pulls her closer. Julia falls into him a little too hard, shoulder digging into Magnus’s chest, and she’s looking up at Magnus, eyes half-lidded and just the right amount of dangerous.

 

“I’ve never been afraid of the ocean,” Magnus says, and Julia leans up and kisses him.

 

_high tide_

 

This is a lie.

 

When Magnus was six, his mother had picked him up in her arms and waded out into the water waist deep. Magnus remembers his arms had wrapped around her neck, fingers tangling in her squid-ink dark hair and face pressed to her jaw.

 

“Mama?”

 

She had shushed him, and then rubbed the back of his head, the way she always did when she thought Magnus might cry. “It’s just the sea, Maggie,” she’d said, and her voice had sounded like the waves crashing against the rocks on their way to shore. “There’s no reason to be afraid.”

 

She walked deeper, until the water was as high as Magnus’s hips, then his shoulders, and then he was breathing in ocean water, salt acrid as it went up his nose and down the back of his throat. His lungs screamed, and maybe they were screaming for a Magnus who could not scream, and then there was darkness.

 

When Magnus woke, he was alone on the shore. He could still taste seaweed and fish on his tongue, and his clothes were stiff with the slush of salt and sand, and his fingertips were pruned, curled around a sand dollar.

 

His mother was gone, perhaps lost among the waves, or perhaps found among them, instead. She never came back.

 

“In with the tide and out with the tide,” Magnus’s father had said over a hastily prepared breakfast of toast and fried eggs, three days later. “It was to be expected.” He poured the rest of his tepid coffee down the drain of their serviceable kitchen sink and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Nothing good ever comes from the sea.”

 

“I came from the sea,” Magnus says quietly. “Three days ago.” He traces the grain of the wood of the kitchen table with an unsteady finger. “Didn’t I?”

 

“No,” his father says sharply. “You were spared by the sea. It’s not the same. You’ll never belong to the sea, Magnus Burnsides. You belong to the shore, and to this lighthouse. Don’t forget that.”

 

Magnus doesn’t forget. He never ventures deeper than his knees into the water, feeling smoothed stones and rough glass beneath the soles of his feet and sticky seaweed clinging to his skin.

 

Magnus belongs to the shore.

 

Sometimes, when he’s sleeping, though, he feels the waves roll over him, gentle and calm, and the press of unknown lips to his forehead. He wakes up with the taste of salt at the back of his throat, and wonders if the sea has really spared him at all.

 

_burials_

 

“Is it sad for you?” Julia asks, sticking her lip out. “The birds, I mean.”

 

“Sometimes,” Magnus says, resting his chin on Julia’s shoulder and linking their fingers together. “It’s so sad that they just… disappear. Almost like they never even lived.”

 

“Don’t think of it like that,” Julia says, and Magnus pulls away from her, stepping closer to the edge of the deck. He sits down, letting his legs dangle through the metal railing. “Think of it like the elves do.”

 

“The elves?” Magnus laughs, thinking of Taako. He turns to Julia, who smoothly sits down next to him. “They send their dead off into the ocean; to be swallowed and consumed by the waves after they’ve turned to ash.”

 

“No,” Julia says, and she laces their fingers together, her thumb rubbing along the outside of Magnus’s in a way that still makes Magnus feel like he’s standing at the edge of a cliff and preparing to dive into the sea. “They believe in an afterlife that’s even greater than this one.”

 

“So?”

 

“So they send their dead off into the sea to _live_ ,” Julia says, and Magnus studies her with wide eyes. Julia flushes under his gaze. “Don’t stare at me like that.”

 

“You’re beautiful, Jules,” Magnus says, and he’s not talking about her face.

 

Magnus’s father has always said nothing good comes from the sea, but Julia is Magnus’s pearl; living, breathing, laughing proof that maybe, just maybe, the best things come from the sea.

 

“No,” Julia says, and then she flutters her eyelashes. “Well, maybe a little.”

 

“Stupid,” Magnus says, and he leans back, pulling Julia with him, and weaves his hands into her hair to bring their mouths together.

 

_burials ii_

 

Funerals seem pointless when someone’s been dead inside far longer than they’ve been dead outside, but Magnus puts on a suit anyway and tries not to think about the blood on the rocks. The ocean had quickly washed it away, but the image is burned into his eyelids. His wide fingers fumble with the tie, which Taako gently takes from his hands and deftly does up for him without comment. Strangely, Magnus doesn’t cry at the ceremony. Taako cries for him, face soft and wet as he holds Magnus’s hand. 

 

“You should come stay with me,” Taako says.

 

“Someone has to make sure the ships find their way home,” Magnus says, and Taako blinks at him, his eyelashes thick with tears that shimmer in the afternoon sun. They're on the docks, out past the turn to head into town. Taako had taken him for a walk after the service, after going around the lighthouse and covering all reflective surfaces.  _Tradition,_ he'd mumbled, when Magnus had asked him what he was doing.  _Superstition._

 

“It doesn’t have to be you doing that,” Taako says. “Let’s go away. Me and you.”

 

“What about the others?” Magnus asks lightly, and already he is angling his body toward the crashing waves. It’s high tide. “We just leave them behind?”

 

“We can come back and visit,” Taako says, and he blushes, and Magnus isn't sure if he’s thinking about him or Kravitz. Magnus squeezes Taako’s hand, and drops it.

 

“It has to be me.” Magnus says it evenly, simply, and he takes off his tie, ready to start the long walk back to the beach. “After all, I’ve gotta keep up my collection, right? Still waiting for that message in a bottle.”

 

“Right,” Taako says, and his voice is faint. Magnus’s already back on the sand in his head, sifting for shells and getting nipped by the tiny crabs that hide in the wet bits.

 

Magnus takes so many things from the sea, hoarding them in his room and falling asleep surrounded by them, but that’s only because the sea has taken so much from him already that it feels a little like getting even.

 

_give and take_

 

Magnus tries to ignore it, but he can see the anxiousness in Julia’s every movement now. He recognizes it because he’s felt it; that restlessness that comes from knowing you’re in the wrong place but being unable to leave.

 

He sees it in Julia’s eyes, too, when they’re quiet, gazing out at the ocean from Magnus’s window as Magnus rubs his thumb along the ridges in his sand dollar out of habit. Julia’s longing, Magnus can see, for a home Magnus doesn’t know.

 

“Are you happy?” Magnus asks, and Julia flinches, the way she always does at loud noises or surprises or unexpected lights, and then she flops over, facing away from the water, to stare only at Magnus. Her hand rubs small circles along Magnus’s side, and she presses her lips together.

 

“I’m happy to be with you,” Julia says. “It’s what I always wanted.”

 

“To be with me?” Magnus jokes. “Not much of a life goal.”

 

“Not like this,” Julia says. “I mean… I always wanted to be... close to you. Somehow.”

 

Her eyes drop to the blanket between them, or maybe to Magnus’s hand, which still cradles the sand dollar that had seemed so large when Magnus was small.

 

“You didn’t even know me,” Magnus says, and Julia’s hand stills on Magnus’s side. Magnus leans forward and kisses Julia’s nose.

 

“Where did you get that sand dollar?” Julia asks, and then she licks her lips. They shine and Magnus can’t look away.

 

Magnus had never realized how prone to obsession he is until Julia.

 

“I can’t remember,” he whispers, before kissing her, softly, sucking her upper lip into his mouth and tasting the ocean.

 

_memories v_

 

“Stay safe,” says a small voice, and lips press to his forehead as his fingers are curled around something round and almost smooth. “I’ll be watching you.”

 

_calm before the storm_

 

“She won’t stay,” Merle says, as Angus teaches Julia how to cut spring fruits.

 

Magnus had taught her, too, but Magnus does it all wrong, cutting the pieces into all different sizes so it looks more like a jigsaw puzzle than a snack. The fruit is too soft, not like the driftwood he sometimes whittles at, giving way under his fingers too easily, pressing into a pulp no matter how gingerly he tries to hold it.

 

 _At least you’re strong,_ Taako used to tease him, and Magnus had poked him in the stomach more than once in revenge.

 

“Maybe she will,” Magnus says, and Barry, who sits to Merle’s left, looks over at Julia and Angus measuredly.

 

“Maybe,” Merle says. “But what if she can’t?”

 

Merle’s white dog is old now, too old to chase after messages in green bottles. But he still comes up and sets his chin on Magnus’s knee, and Magnus pets him gently and remembers the treasures that had slipped away.

 

“Then I’ll wait for her to wash back up,” Magnus says, his throat dry and his chest feeling tight. “I’ll wait and wait and wait until there isn’t any waiting left to do.”

Merle says nothing in reply, doesn't push. He never has. But Magnus can feel his eyes trailing on him the rest of the day, and wonders if Merle had ever been given an answer to that question before by his father. 

 

As they fall asleep, later, Julia’s head on Magnus’s stomach and body curled up in the way Magnus had found her, almost nine months ago on that autumn afternoon, Magnus knows that if Julia goes, she’ll take Magnus’s whole heart with him. The waning moon feels like a countdown; one that Magnus knows will come to an end far too soon to bear.

 

_shells and sea glass_

 

Sometimes, Magnus wonders what it would be like to make love to Julia underwater. But then he realizes it would feel just like this, because it’s nothing but Julia around him, sliding slow inside her, and Magnus, either way, can never seem to breathe.

 

_waning moon_

 

“When we met, you said your mother was from the sea,” Julia says.

 

“The last time I saw her,” Magnus says, “we went into the sea together.” He clenches his fingers into the material of his trousers. “And I came out alone.”

 

“Alone?” Julia asks, and she reaches over and pushes Magnus’s sand dollar into his palm, curling Magnus’s fingers around it, and Magnus remembers lips on his forehead and a voice that sounds so different today, now that years have passed. 

 

“Maybe not,” Magnus whispers, and Julia’s smile is waves breaking loud and foamy at the foot of the lighthouse, dragging Magnus down underneath.

 

“I’ve always wanted to be close to you,” Julia says. “But I’m from the sea, too.”

 

“Is being close to me here not enough?” Magnus asks, and he’s embarrassed at the wobble in his voice. He’s always been the youngest of his friends, and, except once, always the first to cry. “To keep you?”

 

“Sometimes you don’t get to keep the things that come up on the beach,” Julia says, quavering tone stopping Magnus’s heart for what feels like an eternity before it starts again at double the speed.

 

“But I’m selfish,” Magnus whispers, giving her everything. “And I want to keep you.”

 

“A part of me has always belonged to the shore,” Julia says. “A part of me always will. Is that enough?”

 

Magnus scratches his nails gently down Julia’s shoulders, marveling. “No,” Magnus murmurs, “I want all of you.”

 

“We can’t resist the sea,” Julia whispers. She smiles, but her eyes are full of that look. “We can try and try, but in the end, she calls her people back.”

 

_names_

 

Magnus writes his name into Julia’s skin with every kiss. He licks it along the inside of Julia’s thighs as he spreads her legs wide, licking into her until she’s slick enough for fingers, slipping in one and then two until Julia is a gasping, panting mess beneath him. He writes it with his tongue along her thighs as he teases her, and he pushes it inside of Julia with every crook of his fingers upward to drag another tiny scream from Julia’s lovely full lips.

 

He writes his name on the skin of Julia’s belly with his fingers, and digs it into the soft hollow between her neck and shoulders with his teeth as he fills her, slow and steady. Julia’s legs wrap around him, and Magnus doesn’t like the way her soft gasps sound like goodbye.

 

They lie, entangled on the sheets, and Julia carves her name into Magnus’s heart with every exhale, and Magnus thinks it isn’t fair.

 

_collections iii_

 

On the first of July, Magnus wakes up and Julia is gone.

 

He walks out to the beach, picking up the skirt and blouse and socks and underwear that trail like breadcrumbs to the waters edge, arms and fingers trembling as he holds them to his chest. They smell like Julia.

 

Magnus looks out at the waves, and feels the water swirl around his ankles, and his heart breaks, because Julia had maybe carved her name too deep and the pieces can’t hold themselves together.

  

_too deep_

 

“Are you okay?” Barry asks, and Merle looks up from his book, to watch them both with steady eyes.

 

“No,” Magnus says, after a moment. “But have I ever been?”

 

“For a while there, kiddo,” Merle says, “yes.”

 

_no moon_

 

He sees the defeated line of his father’s shoulders, now, when he looks in the mirror, and wonders if he’s anywhere near as strong as he climbs the ladder to trim the wicks. There’s oil under his fingernails.

 

_autumn_

Lup puts her hand on Magnus’s shoulder. “Maybe you were destined to love someone from the sea,” she says.

 

“Why?” Magnus asks, and she smiles.

 

“Your mother was from the sea,” she says, her accent, from some faraway Elvish land, stronger than her brother’s. “Taako tells me there’s that sea-folk blood in you.” She pushes her wild hair from her face and her lips stretch wider. “It calls to you.”

 

It does. Magnus can hear it, even now.

 

_memories vi_

 

…and Magnus is being dragged from the water, the fingers curled around his wrist no longer than his own, and he coughs as air floods his lungs. The sand is cool beneath him, the sun not high enough in the sky to warm it, and if he squints, through stinging eyes, he sees the shadow of a girl, with pretty white teeth and dark wet hair that hangs in her eyes.

 

“Stay safe,” she says, and she kisses Magnus’s forehead. “I’ll be watching you.”

 

And then, the sand dollar, heavy in his small hand.

 

_the rocks below_

 

Winter is colder than Magnus can ever remember it having been before. On the first snowfall, he walks out onto the deck and remembers the way Julia’s face had lit up. He remembers the warmth of Julia’s hand on his arm and the way Julia had watched him, kissed him, pulled him closer with just the right look in her eyes.

 

He leans forward on the railing, and looks down, and for a moment, he’s scared he’ll let himself fall. But then he sees the body of his father, elbows bent in the wrong directions, on a bed of red instead of grey and white, and he steps back until his back hits the freezing cold concrete.

 

He takes a deep breath, and goes inside.

 

He opens the door to the first bedroom, his father’s bedroom. Magnus had been right about the dust.

 

On the desk, though, there’s a photograph. It’s of Magnus’s mother; he knows that as soon as he sees it. She’s wearing that seersucker dress. She does look a bit like him, he thinks. The lips and narrow eyes and high cheekbones. Maybe he’d remembered her face after all. She looks familiar to him.

 

Even more familiar, he thinks, is the look in her eyes. It’s the same one he’d seen in Julia’s eyes; that ever-present longing for the sea from whence they had come. The strange thing is, Magnus is beginning to feel that look creeping into his own eyes, and he guesses it’s because his heart is out there, in the sea.

 

 _the rocks below_   _ii_

 

“W-why are you giving me this?” Taako asks when he visits, and Magnus smiles, bracing his hands on the railing of the deck. Kravitz waves up at them from the shore below.

 

“Hold onto it for me,” Magnus says, and Taako reaches out and holds his hand like he used to do when they were children. The sand dollar sits between their palms.

 

“Why?”

 

“I’m going to go find a message in a bottle,” Magnus says. “I’m going to go find it myself, instead of waiting for it to wash back to shore.”

 

“I—” Taako starts to say, and then he pulls away, looking down at the sand dollar. Magnus thinks he’s crying, but Magnus knows he’ll be okay. “I’ll take care of it,” Taako says.

 

“I know,” Magnus says, and he looks out at the swelling sea. It’s spring again.

 

_ending_

 

Magnus stands at the edge of the water. It’s high tide, and the waves are rollicking against the backdrop of a starlit night sky. The moon is high, and full, and the waves crash as violently as they do in his dreams, ringing in his ears as loud as Julia’s moans when he buries himself in her, fingers clutching too tightly to Magnus’s hipbones as she shakes.

 

The water tickles his toes at first, and then his knees. Magnus looks up at the moon again. It’s shining so brightly.

 

The water is freezing, because it always takes longer to warm with the season than the air, and Magnus’s calves go numb quickly. The wind smells of spring beach, and Magnus’s known this smell as long as he’s lived.

 

Then Magnus is taking a deep breath, and taking a step forward, and taking the most terrible chance.

 

Magnus closes his eyes, and lets the ocean take him down.

 

_ending ii_

 

Julia’s mouth is as warm as the sea is cold.

 

“You made it,” Julia says, and her voice is like sea glass, smooth at some parts and jagged enough to cut at others. It’s always cut Magnus in all the right ways. It ripples through the water, and Magnus wonders if this is how Julia’s voice has always supposed to sound.

 

Magnus’s lungs burn. Julia kisses him, slow and steady and hot, and Magnus melts into her same as he always has, letting his lips part for Julia’s tongue and his fingers wind their way into that shock of dark hair. Julia groans softly, licking at him again, tasting Magnus the same way Magnus is tasting her.

 

Magnus’s eyes sting. “Breathe,” Julia says. “Just breathe.” And Magnus does, and the ocean fills his lungs and everything inside of him, and Magnus knows this is what it feels like to come home.

 

“I came to you this time,” Magnus whispers, or maybe he doesn’t. Everything is strange, like Magnus is floating in between. Julia’s fingers slip against his skin, hot, so hot, and Magnus is turning to ash.

 

“I knew you would,” Julia says, lips brushing against Magnus’s as she speaks, and Magnus is swallowed, and consumed. “I waited for you.”

 

“I came to the sea to live,” Magnus says, and Julia laughs. The sound slinks slick down Magnus’s spine. “Like the elves.”

 

“Then let’s live,” Julia says, and she locks their fingers together, and Magnus’s heartbeat is louder than the sound of the crashing waves above them.

 

And then it is quiet.

 

Magnus can see a faint reflection above him, of the beacon from the lighthouse, and Magnus knows, if he ever wants to go back, he can follow it home.

**Author's Note:**

> my twitter is @lucskywalks, please feel free to come chat :) if you liked this, please consider commenting, it really makes my day to hear feedback/constructive criticism


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